Most small businesses don’t decide to track hours. They start the day someone asks for overtime nobody can check, or the day the accountant asks for timesheets that don’t exist. At that point you’re rebuilding weeks of work from memory and group chats, which is the worst possible moment to design a system.
So here’s the calm version: what the record needs to show, what the rules look like in six of the main English-speaking countries, and how the usual methods hold up once real people start using them.
What a reliable record of hours shows
Whatever tool you end up with, a record you can rely on has the same ingredients:
- Who worked, identified by name, not by a shared login.
- The date and the actual start and finish times. “8 hours” isn’t enough. A total can’t tell you whether someone worked through their break or stayed late on Thursday.
- Breaks, with a start and an end if they’re unpaid.
- When each entry was made and by whom. A time typed in on Friday for Monday is not the same thing as a clock-in on Monday at 8:02.
- Corrections that leave a trail. People forget to clock out. That’s normal. What matters is that the fix shows the original time, the new one and the reason.
The last two are the ones homemade systems usually skip, and they’re exactly what an auditor, an inspector or the lawyer on the other side of a wage claim will ask about.
What the law asks for, country by country
There’s no single rule for the English-speaking world, and the differences are bigger than most people expect. This is the short version. States, provinces and industry agreements (awards, in Australia) can add requirements on top.
| Country | What the record must cover | Keep it for |
|---|---|---|
| United States (federal) | For non-exempt employees, hours worked each workday and each workweek, plus pay details (29 CFR 516.2) | 3 years payroll · 2 years time cards |
| Great Britain | Records that show you respect the 48-hour average week and night work limits (Working Time Regulations, reg. 9), proof you paid the minimum wage and, since April 2026, holiday records | 2 years working time · 6 years pay and holiday |
| Canada (federally regulated) | Payroll records including the hours worked each day (Canada Labour Standards Regulations, s. 24) | 3 years |
| Australia | Time and wages records under the Fair Work Act, including hours where pay depends on them and any overtime | 7 years |
| Ireland | Records that show you comply with the working time rules (Organisation of Working Time Act 1997, s. 25) | 3 years |
| New Zealand | Wage and time records, including the days and hours worked (Employment Relations Act 2000, s. 130) | 6 years |
Most Canadian employers fall under provincial rather than federal law, and US states can set their own periods. The full detail, with what changed recently in the UK, is in how long you have to keep timesheets.
Look at what’s missing from that table: none of these countries makes you buy a particular kind of system. What they care about is whether the record is complete, accurate and still there years later.
Four ways to track hours, compared
Paper timesheets
Cheap, familiar and perfectly workable for two or three people on fixed hours. The weak spots are the ones you’d guess: sheets get filled in at the end of the week, handwriting is hard to read, nothing stops a time being “tidied up”, and the binder has to survive for years. If you stay on paper, have each person write their own times on the day and sign them.
Spreadsheets
A shared spreadsheet feels like an upgrade, and for adding up totals it is. As evidence it’s weak. Anyone with access can change a cell, and unless you’ve set up protected ranges and version history, you can’t show what the sheet said last month. Formulas also break quietly: one wrong cell reference and someone’s overtime vanishes for a quarter.
Physical time clocks
Punch-card machines and wall terminals stamp the time on the spot, which is their big advantage. But they cost money up front, they only work where they’re installed, and someone still has to move the data into payroll. Biometric terminals add a privacy problem many businesses underestimate. In Illinois, fingerprint clocks have produced some of the largest privacy lawsuits in the US, and in 2024 the UK’s data protection regulator ordered an employer to stop using facial recognition and fingerprints for attendance. There’s more on that in the article on buddy punching.
Time clock apps
Employees clock in from a phone, a shared tablet or a computer, and everything lands in one place. The good ones take the time from the server instead of the device, let a manager fix a missed clock-out without erasing the original, and export what payroll needs. Before you choose one, check three things: whether location is collected only when clocking in or all day long, whether it still works without signal, and whether you can get your data out if you leave.
| Method | Works well for | Where it breaks |
|---|---|---|
| Paper | 2–3 people on fixed hours | Filled in late, easy to alter, hard to store |
| Spreadsheet | Totals for payroll | No trail of changes, fragile formulas |
| Wall time clock | One site, everyone starts there | Up-front cost, useless off site, biometrics risk |
| App | Several sites, shifts, people on the move | Depends on the app: check privacy and offline mode |
Rounding, breaks and the minutes that add up
In the US, rounding clock times is allowed under federal rules, but only if it’s neutral. The Department of Labor accepts rounding to the nearest 5 minutes, tenth or quarter of an hour, provided that over time it averages out and employees are paid for all the time they actually work (29 CFR 785.48(b)). A policy that always rounds start times up and finish times down is the kind that ends up in a wage claim.
Breaks are the other quiet leak. Under federal US rules, short rest breaks of about 5 to 20 minutes count as hours worked (29 CFR 785.18), while a genuine meal period, ordinarily 30 minutes or more with the employee completely relieved from duty, doesn’t (29 CFR 785.19). If people are told to “keep an eye on the phone” during lunch, that lunch probably isn’t a break.
Outside the US the details change, but the logic is the same everywhere: if your record can’t show when someone actually started and stopped, you’ll struggle to prove that what you paid them was right.
Setting it up in a week
- Write down the rules you already follow. Daily hours per person, unpaid breaks, who approves corrections. One page is enough.
- Tell the team what you’re introducing, what data it collects and why. In the UK and Ireland data protection law requires you to explain it; anywhere else it’s simply the decent thing to do.
- Run it alongside your current method for one week and compare the totals at the end.
- Decide how missed clock-ins get fixed: who can correct them, and that a reason is always recorded.
- Agree a monthly export for payroll and keep it in the same place every month.
That parallel week is worth more than it looks. It shows you who forgets to clock out, which shifts have breaks nobody takes, and how close your old totals were to reality. Often they weren’t that close.
Track hours without chasing anyone
With CheckInGO each person clocks in with a personal code from their phone, a shared tablet or a computer, and the time comes from the server. Corrections keep the original time and the reason, and you export reports as PDF. $19 a month for up to 10 employees and $2 for each extra one, plus any tax that applies. No contract, and 7 days free to try it with your team.
Try it free for 7 daysFrequently asked questions
Is it legal to track employee hours with an app?
Yes, in all six countries covered here. The laws define what the record must contain and how long to keep it, not the tool. If the app collects location or biometric data, privacy rules apply on top, so tell employees what is collected and why.
Do I need to track the hours of salaried employees?
It depends on the country. In the US, federal rules require hours records for non-exempt employees but not for exempt ones, and being on a salary doesn’t make someone exempt by itself. In Great Britain the 48-hour average limit applies to most salaried staff too, unless they’ve signed an opt-out, so you still need to be able to show you comply.
How long should I keep timesheets?
From 2 years (US time cards, British working time records) to 7 years (Australia). The country-by-country detail is in how long to keep timesheets.
Can I round clock-in times?
In the US, federal rules allow rounding to the nearest 5, 6 or 15 minutes only if it averages out and employees are paid for all the time they work. Rounding that always favours the employer isn’t allowed. Paying to the minute avoids the question entirely.
What should I do when someone forgets to clock out?
Correct it, but don’t overwrite it. Keep the original entry, the corrected time, who changed it and why. A record with visible corrections is far more believable than one where every day is perfect.
Information current as of 27 October 2026. Rules change, and states, provinces and industries often add their own, so use this as a guide rather than legal advice.
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